The Glasgow Daily Record reports Mike Skinner says he may collaborate with Outkast. The Streets rapper said, “Outkast’s Andre 3000 left a message for me but I was up to my ears in stuff at the time and I’d want to take any collaboration between us seriously. I also got Coldplay’s Chris Martin to sing on the new album but his record company wouldn’t allow it in the end.”

Darryl Sterdan of the Winnipeg Sun reviewed The Streets’ new album ‘A Grand Don’t Come For Free’, giving Mike Skinner an impressive 4 1/2 out of 5 stars. Sterdan writes, “‘A Grand Don’t Come for Free’ has firmly established itself as one of the most creative, honest and fully realized records of the year — and another smashing success for Skinner.” Read more.

Mike Skinner of The Streets wrapped up his tour playing material from their eagerly awaited second album ‘A Grand Don’t Come For Free’ at the Carling Brixton Academy on Saturday (May 22) in London. Check out pictures from GettyImages and WireImage.

The Streets’ Mike Skinner spoke with Beat magazine about his sophomore album ‘A Grand Don’t Come For Free’, which is a thematic change of direction from his acclaimed 2002 debut ‘Original Pirate Material’. The new emphasis on personal themes, says Skinner, is not so much an acknowledgement of having made it – “my life really hasn’t changed that much” – as simply a desire to tread new ground. “It was just so I could do something different,” he shrugs. Having been quoted as saying that a lot of the appeal of Original Pirate Material lay in its “home-made” feel, Skinner is keen to assert that he’s “managed to keep the kind of personality of the first one.” The differences, then, besides the singular storyline? “The stories are a bit more focused and the production’s a bit tighter.”

Ash, Kelis, The Streets, Franz Ferdinand, Avril Lavigne, Keane, and The loveGods performed Sunday (April 25) at One Big Weekend 2004, Radio 1’s free festival in Derry which drew 10,000 fans. Check out pictures and listen again to the performances here.

Mike Skinner of The Streets almost broke his back making the video for his new single ‘Fit But You Know It’. He tells The Sun: “We were filming around a pool and basically I was showing off. The director asked me to do my shot so I dashed over but all the tiles were really wet. So I slipped and landed flat on my back, cracking it. I winded myself so badly I couldn’t move. The video crew were terrified. They were all looking around like, ‘God! We’re gonna have to go back now without the video’.”

The Streets (aka Mike Skinner) performed on stage at The Astoria on Monday (February 2) in London, England. The gig is the first in a series of performances ahead of the NME Awards on February 12th. Check out pictures from GettyImages.

The Sun reports Coldplay frontman Chris Martin has revealed the group has recorded a track with The Streets, aka rapper Mike Skinner. “We’ve been writing songs for this next record for 18 months now and we’ve probably written about 60. We did a song with The Streets,” he said. “As soon as we finished our huge world tour last year, we went straight into the studio to get these ideas down in case we died or something before they were recorded. We’ve completed enough songs to make sure that if our plane goes down, they can be finished. I’m gonna die one day so I want to have written lots of songs.”